TOY - Trainers Online for Youth
This is a reference for Natalia Seriakova
Time to Act is a training course that aims to support the professional development of young leaders and trainers and to raise the quality of their projects on the topic of citizenship. We approached the idea of citizenship on three different levels: locally, nationally and in the European context. The training course used methods of experiential learning as role plays, simulations and drama methods and group sharing methods as small and large group discussions and brain stormings. Together, we worked out ' method toolkit' on how to motivate youngsters for participation in their community and beyond. All over mission of the training course was to find the ways how to make the issue of citizenship attractive to the youth. Time to Act took place on 22-30.09.2015 in Bad Oldesloe (Hamburg), Germany having the length of 8 working days with 30 youth workers, leaders, trainers coming from Germany, Poland, United Kingdom, Austria, Romania, Spain and Estonia.
Main objectives of this training course are:
• pointing out the connection between citizenship, responsibility for one‘s immediate environment and society and active participation,
• experiencing, discussing and sharing historical and recent understandings of citizenship and its implications for participation,
• approaching different levels of citizenship (local – national – international/European) in practice by simulations, cases and methods development,
• sharing different visions and understandings of citizenship,
• reflecting on the notion of European identity and its underlying values (democracy, tolerance, plurality, human rights),
• raising the quality of projects dealing with youth participation and citizenship.
Participants of the project were 30 youth workers, leaders, trainers coming from Germany, Poland, United Kingdom, Austria, Romania, Spain and Estonia.
Team of trainers:
Natalia Seriakova-Germany
Marco Santos-Estonia
The activity was built on the principles of non-formal education and included the following methodology: theoretical inputs, discussions, work in small groups, trust-building games, group building games, quiz, simulation game, role play, making videos, reflection exercises and others.
The project hopefully will continue in a series trainings about citizenship education.
The most important element of continuation for our project was planned, by the participants, trainings and projects of future cooperation. Special part of the project gave our participants knowledge about Erasmus+ programme, especially about KA1 – the most of the following projects will be based on youth exchanges and youth initiatives, also trainings and seminars. Many participants in our training were trainers, who have lots of experience. This training allowed them to plan future cooperation.
The first present results:
Article in Spain, written by the Spanish participants: http://europaerestu.eu/experiencia-en-alemania-2/?fb_ref=Default
Radio show in UK by Awaz Radio Community
All participants and trainers took part in the radio show that was broadcasted in UK, all of them talked about their experience, learning outcomes, gained compteneces during the project and also they promoted the programme Erasmus+
I was responsible for design and implementation of the activity programme as a full-time trainer. Also I was responsible for hosting and administrative tasks and the final report.